"You'd better get better, buddy. I've got a mountain of questions piling up."

Aida sat on the corner of Fallon's bed, adjusting the awkward hang of the sword over her new dress. Fallon slept, his skin sallow and blankets soaked with sweat. Tears welled up as she wiped a wet cloth across his brow. "I know we don't get along very well, but you've saved my life twice now; a lonely death in the nursing home and a violent one in the Spire."

She adjusted his blankets, catching sight of the tattoo usually covered by his sleeve: a city sprawling across each face of a coin. Strange. Mentally noting to ask later, she stood and departed. She found her Ferals in the villa's gallery of swirl-glazed vases.

Her Feral had set the vases up in what appeared to be a strangely-specific configuration, impromptu wood-block targets placed strategically about them. The girl flung her needles, barely missing the curved necks of the vases. Time and again, she gathered them up, replaced the blocks, and repeated. Beyond, through one of the doors open to the graveled courtyard, a naked and sweat-slicked Ryk trained, likewise performing the same moves over and over. She'd never tried fencing or martial arts or anything, but had seen enough movies about them to figure the repetition must be how you got good at fighting when you didn't have live opponents to practice with.

Ryk stood calmly, then suddenly drove his long spear to the right in a flickering low-high thrust combination. Jerking back, the spearhaft slid smoothly through his hands, the butt end striking an invisible target three meters the other direction. He backpedaled quickly, swinging and thrusting the spear before him as though he retreated from a horde of opponents.

Broadaxe lounged by the doorway, admiring. The Feral met Aida's eye and winked.

All hell broke loose outside the villa.

Broadaxe slung her shield from her back and popped her axe from its belt loop.

"What the hell's going on?" Aida turned to Aliasara as the woman rushed from Aida's rooms. "Is this place always such a mess or does being young again mean I'm the chaos attractor all over again too?"

"I don't know, Aida. I'll find out." Aliasara hustled off.

Ghillie collected her needles and gave Aida one of her inscrutable looks. After a moment, Ghillie made a few hand gestures then stopped and stared again.

"I don't know what those mean." Aida lifted her hands. As Ghillie began to turn away, Aida walked over and put a hand on the girl's shoulder, feeling lean muscle even through the sturdy cloth and thin netting of the girl's currently-bare ghillie suit. "I'm willing to learn though. While we're waiting for Aliasara, teach me something."

By the time Aliasara returned, Aida grokked a few basics: Threat there. Urgent. Stay put.

"I'd hoped for something conversational to get to know you better, but I get your priorities." Aida wiggled the fingers of her left hand after the unfamiliar contortions and adjusted the too-tight bandage around her right. "Trying to keep a crazy, barbarian, idiot woman-child alive has to be stressful enough without adding not being able to communicate on top of it."

The girl nodded as Aliasara swept breathlessly back into the gallery. "A riot. They're killing Wretches, the poor things!"

"What? Who is?" Aida imagined a wild mob chasing the poor untouchables like dogs.

"The crowd from outside. Something set them off. They're screaming 'Wretch Plague' and 'Mother's Will be done' as they do it."

"Damn sure as shit ain't my Will!" Aida pointed herself in the direction of the front gate and walked with purpose. Goldilocks jogged in from her post on watch outside, nervously fidgeting with her spear. All three Ferals fell in around her as she strode through the halls, intercepted shortly by Riccaro.

"Ah, good, you're ready," he said smoothly.

"Ready to kick some ass and save some Wretches, yessir!"

"What? No. No!" Riccaro's studied calm evaporated in an instant. "If you keep them waiting any longer it will be a grave insult!"

"Check in my toilet for the two shits I give about insulting some poofy Dynasts." Aida pushed past Riccaro. "There's a mob out there killing people in my name."

"How will you stop them?" he called after her. "You barely kept them in check when they were there to see you yet now they run rampant and murderous. I doubt flaunting yourself at them will work a second time."

Aida's temper flared and she wheeled on him. "Yeah? What should I do, have tea with some stuck-up immortals while people die horribly out there?"

A gentle touch at her shoulder.

"I've seen the mobs since I was young," Aliasara said softly, sadly. "Food riots. Water riots. Work riots. Housing riots. Once they start, nothing can slow them but to let them work their way out or Ocyl's warriors ending them with harder violence than the mobs can make."

Foggy, half-forgotten memories stirred. Washington D.C. when word of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination landed. She'd seen the riots first-hand and if she'd been younger at the time might've been swept up in them herself. Aliasara's words struck home but didn't make her feel any better.

"So what do I do? All evil needs to flourish is for good people to do nothing and all that."

Aliasara thought for a moment, then gestured at the villa about them. "Spread the word that Wretches are welcome here and you will curse anyone who harms them."

Aida thought about, shook her head. "What if they're already in a frenzy and scale the walls? It'll be a slaughter house. Three Ferals can't stop a mob."

Broadaxe rapped on her shield and pounded her chest.

"Yes, I know you'd send a dozen people home sans arm or leg after." Aida placed a hand on the hardened leather armor of the woman's breastplate. "There's just too many out there."

"If you insist on bringing those slimy, corpse-handling muck-crawlers inside the walls they will be pursued." Riccaro rubbed his hands as if wiping away filth. "Dynast Ocyl, however, might send a detachment of soldiers to prevent a mob from looting his villa. I doubt I can talk you out of letting them in here, but at least the soldiers might save us from being butchered alongside the Wretches."

"Yes!" Aida, kissing a startled Riccaro on the cheek. "Thirty dudes on giant, gray-skinned giraffasaurs aught'a give 'em second thoughts. Do it."

When Riccaro did act, he moved quickly, summoning and dispatching Stiller and a number of other serving boys in quick succession. When the last of them sprinted off, he turned again to Aida, smoothing his vine-embroidered green robe and folded his hands in front of him. All business again.

"Your commands are issued, Dy- Aida. May we move to the courtyard for your audience?”

"We may if we must." Aida walked beside him, mentally preparing herself for a Dynastic encounter with clothes probably on but the gloves likely off. "Who all am I talking to again?"

"Several Dynasts to start." The majordomo struggled play it casual, as if multiple Dynasts regularly descended onto his villa. "Dynast Wake of Graves and her latest husband. Dynast Jaxe the Pale of Stacks. Dynast Reck of Vistas."

"What do they want?" Aida smoothed her dress and adjusted her cap in spite of herself. She suddenly felt ridiculous wearing a sword, ball cap, and prom dress together.

"Own it," she murmured, turning the cap around backwards and straightening her back. "There we go. Start a new fashion."

Aliasara apparently overheard her, hiding a giggle behind her hands.

"I would not dare to guess a Dynast's intentions." Riccaro's tone said the opposite.

"Dare away. I won't tell on you."

They entered the tree-laden, priceless-graveled courtyard. Aida looked around, but Ryk had moved on. She could watch him train for days.

With great reluctance, Riccaro spoke. "It is commonly known Wake holds much weight with the Isolates. Reck speaks for the Fractious Fraction often and loudly. Everyone knows Jaxe is the newest to be accepted into the august ranks of the Ancients and youngest as well at a mere Secondus."

"The albino's a whippersnapper, huh? Secondus must mean only two-hundred-something?" Aida selected a bench seat, but instead of seating herself facing the paved circle at the center, she turned opposite to force whoever came to stand on gravel among the tree branches. "So, politics. Everyone wants me to join their little clique."

Riccaro wrung his hands, expression pained. "Would you perhaps want to face the other direction? Our guests would likely be far more comfortable if they stood on smooth ground."

"Precisely. They've had centuries to be Dynasts, this is still my first week. Let 'em be a bit uncomfortable for a change."

"But... but they..."

Aida looked at him expectantly. "So, who's first?"

"Well, that is what I hoped to discuss, Dy- Aida. Wake as a Quintus is the eldest but Reck's skin falls a shade closer to Ebon's than hers yet Jaxe has the Pale but represents the power of the Ancients. Any could serve as excuse for ordering, but they will see in any choice an indication as to whom you favor.

"Right. Who do I see first if I don't care?"

"Uh... if you don't? Um..." His mouth flopped open and closed.

"Good fish impersonation. Bravo. Just send them all in at once." She waved her hand in front of her.

"What? That would be most improper. Unheard of. Everyone expects to-"

"Perfect." Aida grinned. "If I'm going to play the barbarian, let's be barbaric. Bring me the skull of one of my enemies so I can have a drink while you're at it."

Aliasara grinned back, Ghillie's eye corners crinkled, Broadaxe thumped her shield in approval. Goldilocks seemed to have an anxiety disorder.

"A skull..." Riccaro said, clearly lost.

"That was an inside joke. Maybe outside joke from here, dunno." Aida shook her head. "For the guy who runs this whole place, you're not very quick on your feet sometimes."

Riccaro collapsed in on himself and walked away with an air of defeat.

"Thanks for the support," Aida murmured to Aliasara and her Ferals, working to present some appearance of outside calm as her nerves jangled. The ring at her throat twitched. She grabbed it in alarm.

"No you don't," she mumbled. "Wouldn't do to end my first regal audience by blasting my audience into the outfield."

Jaxe entered first, clad in a fashionable, deep-purple ruffles-and-kimono getup. A massive, violet-caparisoned Feral trailed him, a massive maul slung on his back. Broad Axe looked petite by comparison.

Reck followed a ways behind wearing a bland toga-alike; disheveled, squinting, and tiny by comparison to the barrel-chested Jaxe and his huge Feral. Half-a-dozen wary Ferals in no discernible uniform clustered tight about Reck.

Jaxe ducked a tree branch, grinned at Aida, and winked. "We meet again, Dynast Aida. I hope this meeting proves even a shade as pleasant as our last."

Though flustered by the reminder, she rose regally to greet him. "At least I understand the dress code better this time. How is the Stacks?"

"Rich, abundant, profitable, and especially stormy this time of year. On course to become the primary source of water for the whole-"

"Okay, full stop." She held up her hands. "Call me a barbarian idiot child like my Seneschal does if you want, but what's the difference between water and plain old water?"

He gave her a long, indecipherable look. "Solid current forms currence. Currence melts to watter. Watter's current dissipates over time, leaving water. How could your people not know this?"

"That's the clearest, simplest explanation I've gotten since I got here but I still don't think I get it."

Jaxe shrugged and plucked a fruit dangling near his ear. "How's the One-Eighth as they call it now?"

"I imagine it's about the same: what's not bleak and barren is probably still rotting or eating the rotting."

He nodded and leaned to the side to examine her cap.

"Your headwear's certainly novel. Don't believe I've ever seen its like."

"It comes from over the rainbow so I doubt you ever shall."

"The strings are likewise unique. I believe they were all you were wearing at the Jadeye. Didn't know anyone but select servants and barbarians wore them."

"Select barbarian Dynasts wear them too, hadn't you heard?"

Jaxe smiled and nodded towards the cautiously approaching Reck. "That paranoid little Dynast is Reck. Try not to take him as seriously as he takes himself. I can't recommend visiting his verse, Chalk, either. The dust gets in everything, apparently gumming up the works between the ears with enough exposure. Took me weeks to finally get the dust out of every crack and crevice after my visit."

"I better not go then. I've got more cracks and crevices than you do."

As Jaxe guffawed, she turned to Reck. The compact, tightly wound Dynast glanced about suspiciously as if expecting ambush.

"I don't believe we've been introduced." She almost extended a hand before remembering the custom didn't exist here. "You must be Dynast Reck of Vistas."

"I must, more's the pity," he said, grouchy and still not looking at her.

"We've just met and I already agree with you."

Her words elicited another grin from Jaxe.

"We don't have to eat, as I'm sure you know, but with specimens as lush and ample as this how can you refuse?" Jaxe took a bite of the pearish fruit, closing his eyes as he slowly chewed.

"Where is Wake?" Aida craned her neck to look past their Ferals.

"She took offense at meeting with you en masse." Jaxe shrugged. "I imagine she's pouting and complaining to the majordomo."

Aida frowned and turned to Aliasara. "Would you be a dear and inform her Dynastness that she can meet with me en masse or not at all?"

"Happily, Aida," Aliasara smiled, bowed, and walked away.

Reck glared at Aida. "Shouldn't let them do that."

"What, be happy?"

"No. They stop calling you Dynast, they'll soon forget it. Next think you know they're rioting and burning your villas down."

"Truly?" Aida rubbed 'absently' at the thin, luminescent silver halo etched into her scalp. "I don't have any villas to burn, but I'd better watch out that I maintain my Dynastardly appearance."

Glare transformed to squint. The prickly sort, this one, watching every word for insult. "See that you do. Nothing good comes from letting your lessers think themselves your equals. A small step from there to believing themselves your betters."

"How uppity of them."

Commotion across the courtyard fortunately interrupted the conversation.

A forced, high-pitched laugh. Boots on gravel. Wake appeared, adorned in a white-and-gold gown cut strategically to reveal bare skin where faintly-luminescent Dynastic threads gleamed at her neck, shoulder, waist, and forearm.

Five of them counting her forehead.

Her butterball of a husband flopped along in a sea of creamy lace beside her. Several dozen retainers, servants, and Ferals caparisoned in gold and dark gray streamed after, so many that the comfortable courtyard suddenly felt small. Several of the servants' sole job seemed to be managing the long train trailing from Wake's gown.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Aliasara stood awkwardly at the back of the courtyard. Aida waved her over, not ready to face these three with only a trio of mute Ferals at her back. Riccaro followed Aliasara, his frown deafening as he watched the Dynasts and their retainers jostling and shifting for space between the trees.

Breaking out of her seemingly deep conversation with her husband, Wake became aware of the restricted space Aida'd left them and snapped her fingers. "Ferals, chop down this tree."

Several Ferals packing a variety of edged weapons broke from her entourage and set to it, chips of soft wood flying.

Riccaro stepped forward, wringing his hands. ""Dynast Wake! Dynast Ocyl imported those trees from Groves at great expense."

"Tell Ocyl I imported his mausoleum's stones from Shale at great expense." Wake offered Riccaro a smile that merely bared fangs. She turned to Aida, gave the slightest of nods.

"I hear the menials call you simply Aida? If you allow their kind such informality, what does that leave us as Dynasts to call you?"

"Call me what you like, Wake." The tree fell and Wake's Ferals dragged it away. "Us barbarians put little stock in formality."

"So I gathered." Wake frowned, her gaze flicking between Reck and Jaxe.

Jaxe bowed. "Wake and Retham... wait, is it Retham or was that the last husband? You're Jensey maybe? Can never keep them straight."

Whatever his name, the husband pouted. His pudgy face wrinkled as he looked plaintively to Wake. She took patted his hand like a mother comforting a troubled child and studiously avoided looking at Jaxe.

"Don't mind him, Sweetling. Jaxe here has barely passed his second Partaking; practically newborn. I know you can't tell since the silver barely stands out against his skin."

Jaxe looked down, frowned, tapped the inlaid silver line around his wrist, then traced his finger to the pure-white back of his hind. He startled in mock surprise. "By Ebon's holy tits, what happened? All the black must have washed off in the bathhouse."

"Can we dispense with the crudity, frivolities, and interminable petty backbiting so we can get to business?" Reck said sourly.

"Why, my good Dynast of Chalk," Wake said with seeming wonder. "By their third Partaking a Tertius must surely know the Dynast absolutely runs on interminable pettiness and backbiting."

"For probably the only time, I'm with Reck." Aida's tapped her foot impatiently as she thought of the epidemic silently spreading outside. "Can we get down to business?"

Jaxe grinned. Reck thrust his nose at Wake as if he'd won some major debate point. Wake doted over her husband, tuning the rest of them out entirely.

"Well?" Aida dropped down onto the bench and propped up a knee.

"I'm fairly certain we're all here for the same thing, so I'll jump in." Jaxe turned and tossed Reck the fruit's core. Reck caught it instinctively before dropping it and staring in disgust at his hands.

Aida waved her hand in their direction. "You want me to join you?"

"That cuts to the core of it, yes." Jaxe smiled, though she caught in his quick appraisal of her a hint of the real Jaxe running beneath his jovial facade. With their twenty-or-thirty-something year-old bodies Aida found herself constantly forgetting her hundred years reached at best half of their ages. Whatever her demeanor, Wake didn't live long enough to get those five gleaming Threads by chance.

All three looked at Aida expectantly, as though waiting for her to point at one of them and say "I choose you!"

Instead, she hugged her knee and looked between them. "Okay, sell me."

They were, of course, above looking to one another for understanding. Everyone stared at her.

"Convince me. Why should I join anyone?"

No response.

Wake messed about with hubby's lace, Reck glared at her, and Jaxe smiled as if at an inside joke only he understood. Busy weighing the benefits of speaking first versus last, she realized belatedly.

To expedite things, she chose for them. "Reck, what do they call your party? The Fraction?"

Reck regarded at her sourly. The frown lines he'd managed to etch even into his endlessly youthful face declared it his favorite expression. "We call our Chapter 'The Renewal'."

He stopped as if that morsel would induce her to instantly join. Aida's 'continue on' gesture extracted a bit more.

"We approach those who, through no fault of their own, earn verses deficient in major ways." He stopped until she gestured for more.

"The more established of us work to help other Dynasts whom the Black Court gave dross instead of gold until we can gain enough under our banner to rectify the situation."

"So you think a stacked deck gave you the crap hands you were dealt?" She realized as she spoke how deeply idiom ran in language. Did cards even exist here? "What I mean to say is you think the system's rigged, you got the garbage end, and if you were in charge you'd fix it?"

"Your description functions adequately."

"But leaves out the bit where the Fraction's leadership runs your verse," Wake added dryly.

Aida spoke fast before Reck's teeth unclenched to allow a verbal volley at Wake. "What do 'menials' feel about the system, with one person ruling an entire verse without their consent, input, or hope of achieving the same?"

"I don't understand." By Reck's utterly blank expression he really didn't. "We're talking about Black Court affairs."

Aida turned to Jaxe, smiling in anticipation of him sharing in her jab at Reck's hypocrisy, but he clearly missed it too.

Jaxe waved his hand dismissively. "The DissatisFaction are petulant children upset that their older brother is stronger or their little sister is smarter than them. They say 'when I have children, I'll be sure all of them are equally strong and smart.'"

"It's not as though the Black Court hides choice verses away in a back corner of the Vale for distribution to specially chosen new Dynasts." Wake's frilly fake laugh grated on Aida. "Do you propose we simply give everyone a verse as bounteous as Heaven's Tread?"

Reck cast a smoldering look at Jaxe and Wake. "I'm not an idiot, I know that's not possible. Just a redistribution of the Donative structure to lean on the richer verses, an expansion of the Vale Walkers to find more verses, and a system so those with the least viable verses might gain replacements when they're available."

Everyone started talking at once, arguing, counter-arguing, and sniping one another. Clearly Aida's questions plunged her into a mess of Dynastic politics tangling just under the surface. She waved her hands for silence in vain, finally resorting to snatching up two larger bits of gravel and clacking them loudly. One cracked, coating her in a fine spray of dust.

She coughed and waved it away, staring down at her now-dirty dress in annoyance.

"I think I get what they want Renewaled." Brushing at it futilely with her complete hand, she pointed to Wake with the other. "What you got?"

Drawing herself up regally, Wake stepped over the splintered tree nub jutting from the rocks, attendants scrambling to steer her train around it. "We Isolates believe Dynasts should be left in peace to run their verses as they see fit. With every passing century, the Donative grows more onerous, the Black Court's meddling in our internal affairs ever deeper and more corrupt. What little accountability the Black Court once obtained decays to the point where the Court's ass doesn't know what it's mouth is eating, if you'll pardon the expression."

Aida smiled. "We have a similar saying."

Wake nodded at Aliasara, the woman shrinking as four Dynasts turned towards her. "If you want to arrange your new verse as you please, even try out a ludicrous notion like menial equality-"

Jaxe chuckled, Reck growled.

"-we can help insulate you from the meddling Inviolates. In turn, you can help us gain traction in reducing the Donative and-"

"Hold up a sec." Aida raised her hands. Wake 'humphed' at being interrupted, stepping back in indignation.

Aida turned to Jaxe. "What's this Donative I keep hearing about?"

Jaxe gave her that inscrutable look again, Reck's head lolled, and Wake tittered. Aida felt her temper rising but fought it under control, her teeth gritting as she spoke. "As a barbarian whose Seneschal may be dying as we speak, there are nuances to life in the Kiloverse I haven't grokked yet."

"Kiloverse?" Jaxe parroted.

"The All. The Book, whatever."

"Hm, your term carries a certain ring." Jaxe repeat her word softly several times. "A portion of the Donative funds the Legions based in Ziggurat-"

"Legions?" Aida cut in. "Armies? To defend against who? Or what?"

Reck snorted with derision. "Rogue Dynasts who believe they can simply leave The Book or cease the Donative. Idiots cutting themselves off from ever Partaking again only to find Legions flooding them through every Thorn."

"And the Mon." Jaxe's lips twitched. "Can't forget them.

"Don't be scared, Sweetling." Wake wrapped her arm around her husband as he wailed and cowered against her, eyes wide. "I won't let the Mon get you."

Reck actually laughed before catching himself. An ugly bark, like Frank's. Aida hadn't spent a single thought on the old miscreant since they'd left. She grinned at the thought of how poorly he'd take the lay of things here.

Reck cast a surreptitious glance at Aliasara, the array of other villa servants watching from the courtyard doorways, and those in Wake's retinue. "Yes, must keep our menials safe from the Mon."

"Mon?" Aida tracked back from her meandering thoughts back to what they were talking about. She tried not to stare at the grown man huddled against Wake like a scared child. Failed. She'd gathered the distinct impression that Wake's husband wasn't all there.

"Ascendant and Dynasty protect us from the Outsiders," Aliasara blurted out, making a warding sign. Riccaro and many of the servants in Wake's retinue duplicated the gesture.

Jaxe nodded at her sagely. "Yes, that."

"Like Aj?" Aida said, trying to track.

"Worse," Aliasara said, emboldened by Jaxe's gesture to continue. "Aj is a messenger from the Ascen who stopped only when we accepted the extent of our sins. The innumerable Mon, the Outsiders, they exist only to destroy The Book. Only the Dynast protects us from their demonic and monstrous children ever-threatening to break into the Book from the Hells beyond. Without the Dynasty they'd tear the Book apart, devour us all."

The woman's genuine fear gave Aida a chill, an image of old maps with "Here Be Monsters" scrawled on the outer edges leaping to mind. In the Kiloverse, the monsters were real?

Yet Jaxe barely contained a condescending smile as Aliasara talked, Wake tittered, and Reck seemed impatient to get on with things. She made a mental note to talk to Ocyl or Jaxe in private to probe deeper since the Dynasts clearly toed some public line in front of regular folk but held different opinions in private.

"When not forming the hard covers protecting the Book from the Mon," Jaxe said mildly, "the Legions put down rogue Dynasts, rebellious Verser Lords, and large-scale menial uprisings or revolts."

"Okay, so the Donative pays the armies..."

Wake looked up from rubbing her husband's back. "Plus the endless bureaucracy lodged in the swamps of Libriam, that creature worming its tentacles into every other part of The Book."

"Don't forget the Inviolates' unlimited, undisclosed, and untraceable budgets, out doing who knows what for who knows who," Reck said, bitterly. "And to overpay all those Keen mercs to protect the poorly-distributed Skeineries."

"Also Inro the Immobile and his Sunset Legions," Jaxe added.

It felt good to finally know something. "I've heard of him. Doesn't he guard the Aj demon... angel... thing?"

"That's certainly the line he's spouted for years." Reck shook his head vigorously. "Sunset's expanded to imprison mad Dynasts, contain monsters and demons, host vaults of dangerous relics and the like, but not near enough to justify Inro's unceasing push for more soldiers, more weapons, more currency for convoluted traps and strange devices. All supposedly to fight Aj when it awakes."

"It sounds like it was pretty serious when Aj came the first time." Aida couldn't figure out why Reck sounded so derisive. "Seems prudent to be ready when it wakes up. Didn't the thing kill ninety-percent of everybody last time around?"

"Only a handful of Dynasts were even alive when the Kiss... happened," Wake said. Aida sensed finger quotes around 'happened'. "And that was an age ago. When or if the Kiss happened, I think if the Aj was truly going to wake up again it would have done so sometime in the last half-a-millenium."

Wake motioned a servant to collect a fruit from a surviving tree when her husband noticed it and extended his arms like a needy toddler.

Aida caught Wake's brief but pointed look at Aliasara during the pause. Ignoring the subtext, Aida said, "You sound like you don't think it's real."

Before the servant could collect the fruit, Jaxe plucked one and hurled it full-force like a baseball pitcher at Wake's husband. The giant man-baby wailed as Wake splattered it to the ground with a speed and violence startling from a woman so apparently frivolous and floofy.

Wake glared at Jaxe whose eyes went wide and innocent. "Just trying to help."

Reck shook his head and kicked gravel around. "Only a few Dynasts still living even existed at that time and most of them as Kin not yet Partaken. Ocyl, Inro, Rega..."

"Fixed Feli," Jaxe added.

"Nobȇ," Wake murmured. At the mention, Jaxe rubbed his jaw while staring into the distance and Reck went still.

As Aida opened her mouth to ask, Reck gave the gravel a vicous kick again and glared at her. "Everything we've mentioned represents a mere fraction of the Donative-"

"Not this again." Jaxe assumed a pained expression.

Reck thrust an accusing finger towards him. "Anyone with half-a-mind can add it up. Most of the Donative goes to expand Monopolis. Are you going to deny that City of Currency endlessly grows, ever expanding at our expense? Even as they debase the currency, hollowing out the gold to horde the currence within for themselves."

"Rega the spider queen at the heart of the Exchequer, how can you expect it not to web thickest where she lives?" A bitter or perhaps jealous edge crept into Wake's voice. "That Dynast started dipping her fingers into everything centuries before most of us were born and now they're so deep you can't tell where currency ends and she begins."

Jaxe turned to Aida, speaking conversationally. "Many of the Fraction hold the daft notion that some conspiracy of Dynasts-"

"The Ancients," Reck interjected.

"-horde the Donative, secreting mountainous piles of currency away. Not to spend, mind you, since no one can point to what they've bought, but they fill empty verses with it, build mansions and estates out of it, or some nonsense."

"Swim in it like Scrooge McDuck?" Aida smiled at the image.

"I don't know this Scrooge, but perhaps." Jaxe returned her smile. "Rolling in piles of coin fits the myth they fabricate."

"Rather than stirring this overcooked pot of soup, could I continue?" Wake asked pointedly.

Aida mentally backtracked, trying to remember what she'd be continuing. "Ah yes. You were telling me why I should side with the Isolates."

"Indeed. To sum up simply: you appear an independent woman unafraid to speak her mind and does as she wills. The rights of the First Thread being what they are and not what they once were, you'll need some support to establish your One-Eighth. Falling in among the Isolates will furnish you such support without chaining you to the fruitless, disjointed cause of the Fraction or slaving you to the Ancient's whims."

"Sound like good points." Aida turned to Jaxe. "Speaking for said Ancients, why should I slave myself to your whims?"

Jaxe unleashed his disarming, seemingly genuine laugh. "Hardly that. I'm the newest Ancient and clearly no slave."

"You hold the richest watter source in all the Book cupped in your palm." Reck snorted. "That gives you bargaining power she doesn't have."

"And you the richest source of chalk in all the Book," Jaxe countered. "Why my good wreck of a Dynast-"

"How many times must I tell you to cease that mirthless mock?"

"Until it ceases to be entertaining, my dear Dynast of Chalk." Jaxe trailed off, reaching for a cluster of fruit and plucking the lowest of them. "If you didn't want people to make jest, why shorten it to something so accurate? When your original name is 'Reckwalder' I do see the challenge."

Before Reck could retaliate, Aida stepped between them. "He's got a point. Why would the richest handful of Dynasts in the Kiloverse want me? I didn't call it 'One-Eighth Shithole' as a ruse to keep someone from stealing it from me. My current population is a skinscribe and a gigantic rotting turtle. My primary exports are volcanic ash and hand-eating, dog-sized bug-lizards."

She waved her mangled hand for emphasis, noticing the bandages grew tight yet again.

Jaxe's expression smoothed, his tone shifting to the most businesslike she'd ever heard it. "All jesting aside, the Council of Ancients decided that, given the increasing tensions of late, reaching out to new Dynasts may serve our best interests."

"And a lambent ram's shit glows like its wool. I have a handful here to sell." Wake looked up suddenly from where she'd been buried in serving her husband fruit, slicing it delicately with a long knife she'd produced from who knew where. "You spit into a golden cup then tell the woman to drink it up just because you proclaim it wine."

The glittering gems on her rings and gleaming gold gilding Wake's fruit knife undercut her point somewhat, but she pressed on. "Half-a-dozen new Dynasts have Partaken in the last century, the last only a decade past. Not once did the Ancients approach them thus."

Jaxe turned the fruit in his hand, reminding her of a White House Press Secretary delivering a scripted report only to be disrupted by a reporter bringing up the latest scandal. "Only because the tensions did not simmer as they do now."

Reck stared with his mouth agape. "The Ancients suddenly demean themselves to accepting a barbarian Dynast ruling what, by her own admission, is as worthless a verse as they come?"

"I love when people demean to me," Aida said dryly.

"No offense meant." Reck turned quickly back to Aida. "I merely find him as implausible as Wake does. You surely have gotten a taste of his golden tongue-"

"Taste my tongue she most certainly has. And other things besides." Wake threw a glance at the Jadeye's sphere looming high overhead. Aida pointedly didn't look.

"-but don't let that blind you to the empty nature of his offer. It's like an el; they look and sound real enough but reach for one and your fingers pass through so much smoke and their voices to nonsense whispers."

Wake handed her knife to a servant. "At best. More like embracing an anticore from the Sect. They wear convincing human skins, but hold one close and you'll feel naught but swarming insects writhing beneath the flesh."

The image brought bile to the back of Aida's throat.

"They'll impugn our motives all day out of envy and spite." Jaxe waved his fruit dismissively in the direction of Wake and Reck before dropping it negligently to the gravel. "My offer is genuine. However they jabber, neither of them can deny that the sheer volume of resources commanded by even the least of the Ancients dwarfs any dozen Isolates or any score of the Fraction."

He stepped back and bowed to Wake with a flourish, drawing a frown in return.

"The Chapter's representatives serve as accurate representations for the whole. Wake here may be the wealthiest Isolate but all she can offer is corpses and tomb dust while Reck..."

Jaxe managed to further dramatize the depth and extravagance of his bow to Reck. "...can't even offer the corpses."

All humor left the albino Dynast's mien as he rose and stepped close to Aida, nose almost touching hers. His voice dropped to a menacing growl. "This all was but for show. There is no decision to make. Think. You do not choose friends here, but enemies. Do you really want those who hold the might of Ziggurat and the wealth of Monopolis arrayed against you?"

Aida didn't intimidate easily, but the sheer presence and threat he exuded made her step back. As fast as it appeared, Jaxe's hard intensity melted away and the jovial, good-natured jester returned.

"Besides." Jaxe gestured at himself then the other two Dynasts with a grin. "Who offers the more congenial company in which to spend the next several centuries?"

While Reck visibly seethed and Wake hid in a pretense of wiping fruit juice from her husband's chin, Aida turned away. Forcing herself to stand rock still countered her desire to curl up with her face in her hands or run to the warm comforts of the bathhouse and forget all this.

But she was a Dynast now.

"Woman up," she murmured, adjusting her cap. Aliasara stepped forward to squeeze her hand and offer a reassuring smile.

Every ounce of regality, self-control, and self-confidence Aida possessed rose in her. She squeezed Aliasara back then turned to face the Dynasts. "Ocyl managed to steer a course free of your factionalism. What if I were to follow in his tread?"

Wake laughed and her husband joined insipidly despite clearly having no idea what was going on. "Ocyl holds a vast, rich domain that he transformed into the greatest hub of trade in all the Book. What do you have?"

The other two looked at her expectantly, Jaxe smiling good-naturedly while Reck glared. Aida felt the self-possession and strength she'd summoned crumble.

"Us," Aliasara said softly from behind Aida.

"You?" Wake laughed in startled delight. Jaxe and even Reck joined in, as did Riccaro and many in Wake's retinue. "A menial?"

The smile on Aliasara's face withered, the woman wrapping her arms about herself and shrinking down. Something snapped inside Aida. She whirled on the laughing Dynasts. "You will be silent. Now."

Their laughter took on a life of its own. Wake leaned on her husband as though not able to hold herself up. Jaxe wiped tears from his eyes. Reck alternated between laughing and a coughing fit. Aida shook with impotent rage, the feeling redoubling as those villa servants watching from the fringes faded quietly away and the attendants in Wake's retinue shuffled towards the walls, eyes on their feet.

"Shut up, all of you!" Aida shouted. The ring at her throat vibrated and she reached to pull it away. Stopped.

Her whole life she'd caved in or run away when times got rough, when she was pressed to put herself on the line for what she believed in. For the people she cared about. Afraid her whole life to take a stand.

Not this time.

"Menials!" Jaxe cried, repeating the punchline before breaking back into laughter and rejuvenating the cruel mirth.

"Get out of my sight, all of you." She spoke softly this time, but the reverberation built inside her. Completely ignored by the other Dynasts, she slid one foot back instinctively to brace herself and leaned forward slightly. "I said, get... OUT!"

She remembered the next few seconds in crisp, slow-motion detail.

Her final word boomed. Surprised, shocked expressions on the Dynasts' faces. A visible shockwave blasted from her throat. Leaves stripped from those tree branches that didn't splinter away entirely. Gravel flew. Feral and Dynast alike tumbled and rolled in the sonic tidal wave. White tiles coating the courtyard walls cracked and rained down.

In the echoing silence afterwards, all those previously standing before her lay heaped at the back of the courtyard, half-buried in gravel and broken branches. Aliasara clung to Aida with a look of awe, terror, and wonder as the battered Dynasts and their bodyguards slowly climbed to their feet.

"Leave. Now." Aida said softly, the courtyard reverberating with the power of her voice.

Wide-eyed, the Dynasts complied, too stunned to be angry. Yet.

Aida closed her eyes, bowed her head. Though part of her exulted, the crushing weight of what she'd just done bore down like Atlas' globe. Consequences, when they came, would certainly be severe. "Get a chance to do it all over and I just screw it all up again. Just pissed off the rulers of the universe. Universes."

A touch on her arm, another at her hip. Fingers brushed her hair. Someone hummed something soft and soothing. The warmth of human presence filled the space around her.

She opened her eyes.

The villa servants and stragglers from Wake's retinue clustered tight around her, tears streaming as they reached to touch her. Ghillie, Goldilocks, and Broadaxe stood among them, holding her, eyes gleaming. Aliasara hummed the lullaby, hugging her tight.

"No, Aida, Mother of Exiles." Aliasara held her arms, beaming at her. "You just won the hearts of everyone else."